. The essays of Leigh Hunt. n fine weather, like the present, for instance, to loungeunder the hedgerow elms in one of these sylvan places, andsee the light smoke of the cottages fuming up among thegreen trees, the cattle grazing or lying about with a heavyplacidity accordant to the time and scene, painted jaysglancing about the glens, the gentle hills sloping down intowater, the winding embowered lanes, the leafy and flowerybanks, the green oaks against the blue sky, their iviedtrunks, the silver-bodied and young-haired birches, and themossy grass treble-carpeted after the vernal rains. Trans
. The essays of Leigh Hunt. n fine weather, like the present, for instance, to loungeunder the hedgerow elms in one of these sylvan places, andsee the light smoke of the cottages fuming up among thegreen trees, the cattle grazing or lying about with a heavyplacidity accordant to the time and scene, painted jaysglancing about the glens, the gentle hills sloping down intowater, the winding embowered lanes, the leafy and flowerybanks, the green oaks against the blue sky, their iviedtrunks, the silver-bodied and young-haired birches, and themossy grass treble-carpeted after the vernal rains. Trans-porting is it to see all this, and transporting to hear thelinnets, thrushes, and blackbirds, the grave gladness of thebee, and the stock-dove brooding over her own sweetvoice. And more transporting than all is it to be in suchplaces with a friend that feels like ourselves, in whose heartand eyes (especially if they have fair lids), we may see allour own happiness doubled, as the landscape itself is reflectedin the FAR COUNTRIES Imagination, though no mean thing, is not a proud it looks down from its wings upon common-places, itonly the more perceives the vastness of the region about infinity into which its flight carries it might indeedthrow back upon it a too great sense of insignificance, didnot beauty or Moral Justice, with its equal eye, look throughthat blank aspect of power, and reassure it; showing it thatthere is a power as much above power itself, as the thoughtthat reaches to all, is to the hand that can touch only thusfar. But we do not wish to get into this tempting region ofspeculation just now. We only intend to show the particularinstance, in which imagination instinctively displays its naturalhumility : we mean, the fondness which imaginative timesand people have shown for what is personally remote fromthem ; for what is opposed to their own individual con-sciousness, even in range of space, in farness of situation. 27 28 FAR COUNTRIES T
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